Schengen

Commenting on the proposals, agreed at last week's EU summit, to revise the Schengen agreement to allow the reintroduction of border controls under certain conditions, Greens/EFA co-presidents Dany Cohn-Bendit and Rebecca Harms said:

"Following last week's EU summit, which tasked the EU Commission to propose a revision of the Schengen agreement, a number of member states are pushing for the European Parliament to be excluded in the subsequent decision-making process. Any back-door deal that would exclude the parliament from the decision-making would not only subvert the democratic process and fly in the face of the EU Treaty, it would amount to a declaration of war against the European Parliament.

"The Greens intend to raise this issue in the EP's plenary session in Strasbourg next week and call on the bigger political groups to defend the parliament's treaty-defined right to co-decision on any changes to the Schengen agreement.

"Reintroducing border controls will do absolutely nothing to address the core problems that force migrants to seek refuge in Europe, and also brushes over the failure to create a functioning EU asylum system. Should member states want to allow for reintroduction of border controls, it is essential that this is only foreseen for limited and exceptional circumstances, be highly temporary and, crucially, be decided at EU-level. As the recent French-Italian dispute over the small number of refugees from North Africa shows, leaving such crucial decisions over border controls to narrow national interests would be a fatal mistake."